JACK WINSTON TO LORD LANE

Hotel du Louvre, Marseilles,
December 18.

My dear Montie,

We have just been passing through some of the most interesting parts of France, therefore in the world, and I have derived a certain rarefied enjoyment from it all, as I should have been only half a man not to do. But Brown stock has gone down a little since Carcassonne, why, I know not, though I suspect; and there is depression, if not panic in the market. Jimmy, having made his peace and promised caution, has again been promoted to the post of driver, and from the Jehu point of view I must confess that during a large part of the journey he has covered himself with as much credit as dust. This is saying a good deal, for, owing to the slight rainfalls in these southern departments, the roads are often buried inches deep under a coating of grey, pungent dust, enveloping all passing vehicles in a noisome cloud. They have also, set in their surface at irregular intervals, large pans or dishes with perpendicular walls from an inch to three inches in depth. These dishes being concealed by the all-pervading dust, it is impossible-at least for a Jimmy Payne-to know where they are until the wheels bump into them. Sometimes one of our wheels would drop in, sometimes all four. You may imagine the strain of this sort of work upon the tyres, frame, and springs. But in a whole day's run of a hundred and thirty miles we punctured only one tyre, which I mended in fifteen minutes.

Béziers, seen from a distance, set strikingly upon a hill, looked an imposing town, but turned out to be an ordinary and dirty place when we came to ascend its long, winding streets. Beyond, we ran for a while along the edge of a great lagoon, and knew, though we could not see it, that the Mediterranean lay close at our right hand.

At Montpellier we did not stop, and I delivered no lecture on the subject of the gorgeous, all-conquering Duchess, as I might have been tempted to do if we'd had no addition to our party. It's a large, bright, and stately town, very liveable-looking; but nothing was said about lingering, though there are some things worth seeing. We had an impressive entrance into the ancient city of Nîmes, running in by early moonlight, across a great, open plain, under a spacious, purpling dome of sky, the sun dying in carmine behind us, the evening star a big, flashing diamond in the moon-paled east. The old Roman amphitheatre stood up darkly and nobly in the silver twilight; but we passed on to our hotel, the programme evidently being to satisfy the senses at the expense of the soul. They do one very well at the hotel in Nîmes, but I looked forward hopefully to a request to play courier among the sights of the dear old town next morning. It did not come, however. The two ladies went forth with Jimmy, and as I saw them go I could but acknowledge my rival to be a personable fellow. Sherlock Holmes and Little Lord Fauntleroy were both personable fellows in their way, and it is useless to deny Jimmy's possession of the picked attributes of each.

For some reason the word seems to have gone forth that we are to hurry on to Cannes. In the circumstances I am inclined to change my mind, and instead of wishing my dear mother to have departed before our arrival, I'm not sure it wouldn't be wiser to hope that she'll still be there. Miss Randolph "hasn't decided what she'll do after reaching the Riviera." I can't help feeling that Jimmy Sherlock has succeeded in getting in some deadly work of a mysterious nature. It's on the cards that I may find at Cannes or Nice that the trip is finished, and Brown is finished too. Then, as I can't and won't part from my Goddess without a Titanic struggle, I might find it convenient to tell my mother all, throw myself on her mercy, and get her to intercede with Miss Randolph for me. You may argue that her views regarding the fair Barrow are likely to militate against co-operation in this new direction; but I can be eloquent on occasion, and even a mother must see that a Barrow is nothing beside a Goddess.

Altogether, I am nervous. The future looks wobbly, and it is not a pleasant sensation to feel that one is being secretly undermined. Jimmy had better look out, though. The first shadow of proof I get that he's breaking his half of the bargain he shall learn that even a chauffeur will turn. And I look upon Cannes, somehow, as the turning-point in more senses of the word than one.

But to our muttons. No pleasant dallying for me in beautiful old Nîmes or Arles, either one of which would repay weeks of lingering. What dallying there was, Jimmy got-confound him!-and my only joy was in his hatred of early rising. They had him up at an unearthly hour for a glimpse of the amphitheatre and the Maison Carrée at Nîmes, and by nine we were on the road to Arles, Payne driving with creditable caution. We crossed the Rhone and completed the eighteen flat miles in little more than thirty minutes. When we arrived at the end of this time in the astonishing little town of Arles, halting in a diminutive square with two great pillars of granite and a superb Corinthian pediment (dating from Roman occupation) built into the walls of modern houses, Miss Randolph announced that they would walk about for half an hour and look at the antiquities. "Half an hour!" I couldn't help echoing; "why, Arles is one of the most interesting places in France. It is an open-air museum."